The Park
of Nations defined a strategy of intervention in respect of the environment which was
present throughout the various stages of development of the project, from the preliminary
studies which gave rise to the Urbanisation Plan, up to the various stages of realisation
of the works.
The principal objective of
the strategy adopted was to offer the future users of the Park of Nations an urbanistic,
landscaping and environmental framework which was favourable to the rediscovery of Nature,
namely in the usage of a riverfront five kilometres in length.
In this way, in terms of urbanistic and
landscape organisation, the most sensitive environmental areas were safeguarded to create
an urban framework of very high quality, with taking total advantage of the green areas
and the free use of the riverfront. Footpaths were favoured, facilitating carparking and
encouraging the use of public transport. |
| In
terms of urban organisation, there was also an attempt to rationalise the consumption of
energy as much in the conception of the buildings as in the operation of a Centralised Distribution System of Heating and
Refrigeration, which extended throughout the Park of Nations. The option to use this
type of environment-friendly infrastructure which, while innovative in Portugal, was being
successfully implemented in other European cities, was a constant throughout the
development of the Urbanisation Plan. Other innovative systems were also implemented
besides the Centralised Distribution System of Heating and Refrigeration, which uses
natural gas as fuel and provides considerably higher energy production than classic
climate control systems. This is the
case with the Automatic Solid Waste Collection
System, with which it is possible to remove waste avoiding the presence of containers
or having rubbish trucks crossing the area. The system allows the selective collection of
rubbish as it is equipped with two different waste deposit chutes: one for organic waste
and the other for inorganic waste. Selectivity is multifarious as there are rules and
timetables established for the depositing of waste into the system.
A telecommunications network, using
fibre-optics, supports traditional services, such as transmission of voice, fax, data and
images, and also intelligent network services and applications which require a higher
transmission capacity, such as films on demand, digital television or the organisation of
videoconferences.
The installation of a technical gallery where all the
infrastructures for telecommunications, water supply, gas supply and the conduits for the
heating and refrigeration distribution systems and waste collection are installed
contributes to avoiding the inconvenience of having repairs carried out in the public
highway, as is the case in other areas of the city. |
